Exam 2: Scientific Methods for Studying People in Interaction

What does it mean to say that scientific methods are publicly reproducible?

Professor Evans is interested in studying how people form inter-racial friendships, but instead of devising his own original experiment, he decides to analyze this research question across many existing studies. What technique is he using?

When an extraneous variable is manipulated simultaneously with the independent variable of interest, it is said to be doing what?

In order to evaluate scientific hypotheses, social psychologists must test them in a way that make sense. This shift from mere conceptualization to empirical testing is referred to as what?

A statement of the relationship that is expected to exist between multiple conceptual variables is called ____.

Amy and Becky are students in the same Spanish class and have always been equally proficient in the subject. As part of an experiment, a scientist claiming to have specialized knowledge tells their teacher that Amy is likely to surpass Becky in reading comprehension by the end of the year. Even though this advice has no basis, sure enough, Amy ends up earning a better grade in reading comprehension than Becky. What might be the explanation for this?

What is the term that describes the way in which social psychologists develop hypotheses?

What does it mean to say that an experimental effect has external validity?

An experiment that is experimentally sound is said to be high on what?

Ethnicity and age are examples of what kind of variable?

The researchers' behavior, participants' prior experience in psychological research, and the study setting are all potential examples of what?

What are the two important elements of observational accuracy?

What are the three factors needed to infer causality?

An experiment aims to test whether watching certain types of movies (romantic versus horror) can significantly impact current mood, and whether this effect differs by gender. The results show that watching a romantic movie increases short-term mood for women as compared to when they watch a horror film, but that neither type of movie has a significant impact on mood for men. In other words, the effect of film type depends on the gender of the viewer. What is this result an example of?

What are the characteristics that make for a good theory?

The impact of an independent variable alone, independent from any other independent variables, is called what?

What is the name for research that investigates whether changes in one variable are related to changes in another variable?

What is the term describing how much the experimental setting resembles the comparable real world setting?

What are the three components of a true experiment?

What is the term for the variable that is manipulated by the experimenter?